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Canada’s premiers running out of excuses for inaction: Hébert

When Canada’s premiers gather, as they are this week in P.E.I., it seems they forget they are not, as a group, devoid of the power.

When Canada's premiers meet, as they did last year in Niagara-on-the-Lake, they often act as if they are devoid of power, writes Chantal Hébert. This week they will meet in P.E.I. (Aaron Lynett / THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo)

MONTREAL — Every summer the country’s premiers converge on some picturesque spot in Canada for their annual gathering.

Last year it was Niagara-on-the-Lake. This year it’s Prince Edward Island. The backdrop changes as do some of the characters but the script, for the most part, remains the same.

Year in and year out the premiers usually find one or more apples of discord with the federal government of the day to chew on.

Some years they are unanimously aggrieved over some action of their federal partner. Last summer it was Ottawa’s labour training scheme.

On other occasions it is perceived federal inaction — as in the case this year of infrastructure spending — that is in their sights.

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Over the past decade Stephen Harper’s lack of interest for convening first ministers’ conferences has been a recurring theme.

This is not to say that some of the concerns raised by the premiers are not real.

Their grievances over the initial federal labour training reform were serious enough. The proposition stood to cause more systemic problems than it would have solved. And a united provincial front did go some way to bring the federal government to the table.

But it also seems that when the premiers spend time in the same room they conveniently forget that they are not, as a group, devoid of the power to do more than tear up their shirts in front of the cameras.

When repeatedly faced with what they collectively see as a federal leadership vacuum it apparently does not cross their minds to fill it with more than empty words. By all indications, thinking outside the federal-provincial box does not come easily to this generation of premiers.

It is not that they are not equal partners with the federal government in the federation but that they don’t often act like they are.

Take the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

For the second year in a row, the premiers are set to wring their hands over Harper’s refusal to hold a public inquiry into what has become a national disgrace.

There is a point where provincial hand wringing comes perilously close to washing one’s hands of an issue.

For the record an inquiry does not have to be federal to be national. And in this instance the scope of the issue is larger than the jurisdictional limits of any level of government. The provinces, together, have no lack of resources to put to the task of addressing it.

The last time the premiers gathered in P.E.I. was in 2003.

At that meeting, a newly elected Jean Charest convinced his colleagues to make the gathering the pivot for a new intergovernmental forum within which they would pool their expertise and, in the process, enable the provinces to take a larger hand in the affairs of the federation.

Back then the creation of the Council of the Federation came across as a timely initiative — designed to reflect the fact that, as Canada matured, the provinces were increasingly taking on missions that used to be the monopoly of the federal government.

But over the decade that followed, that forum has remained a largely empty shell.

From one year to the next there is always a political excuse to justify its institutional paralysis.

Last year, it was the fragile status of Ontario’s minority government under the untested leadership of premier Kathleen Wynne coupled with the return to the table of a sovereigntist Quebec premier after an absence of a decade.

The latter always has a bit of a chilling effect on the other premiers.

To be fair, the past five years have featured an unprecedented amount of provincial turmoil, with the governing parties of Canada’s four big provinces all undergoing leadership changes. (Alberta is still at it.)

By contrast, this week’s gathering coincides with a return to the relative stability of majority governments in Central Canada and the advent of what is probably Quebec’s most federalist government in living memory.

If this is not the year when the premiers finally run out of excuses to not try to walk some of their talk, they might schedule more golf time and fewer press conferences at their next summer retreats.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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